Editorial Projects in Education is engaged in an ongoing study of high school graduation and issues related to late-secondary schooling and the transition to postsecondary education and employment. As part of this work, EPE publishes an annual special edition of Education Week devoted to critical issues facing efforts to improve the nation’s high schools.
The 2013 installment of Diplomas Count focuses on dropout recovery and innovative strategies for returning the 1 million students who leave school without a diploma each year to the educational fold. Education Week‘s journalists investigate interventions that provide second chances to those youths—a group whose prospects for landing a stable job or a postsecondary credential may depend on finishing high school.
In a perennial highlight of the report, the EPE Research Center releases its latest comprehensive analysis of public high school graduation rates, using the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) method. This year, Diplomas Count provides updated graduation-rate findings for the class of 2010, the most recent year for which data are available. Results are reported for the United States as a whole, the states, and the nation’s 50 largest school districts. In addition, the report reviews state policies on graduation for the class of 2013.
This eighth edition of Diplomas Count features a special analysis from the EPE Research Center that reports the numbers of dropouts and “recoverable youths” (young adults who are out of school without a completed high school education) for the nation and states. The center also identifies 25 school districts that account for 18 percent of the nation’s nongraduates for the class of 2013.
Beyond the contents of the print edition, the online-only features of Diplomas Count 2013 include a multimedia gallery, state-specific policy reports, and state-by-state indicators accessible through the Education Counts database. EdWeek Maps, a Web-based geographical tool, also allows users to explore interactive maps and download a data-rich report for any school district in the country, which includes comparisons to state and national statistics.
